Keep it green, Gordon

Thomsonfly has launched an e-petition to ask Gordon Brown to spend the extra money he will raise through doubling Air Passenger Duty (an environmental green tax) on environmental projects to mitigate the environmental impacts of aviation. 

The petition has already been signed by over 1,700 people, after communication on Thomsonfly’s customer email newsletter and on its website.

Danielle Chapman of Thomsonfly’s industry affairs and environment team, said, “The doubling of APD from 1 February 2007 will contribute an additional £900 million a year to the Government's general finances, with APD in total raising some £1.8 billion per annum - none of which is committed to environmental projects.

She continued, “We call upon Gordon Brown and Tony Blair to dedicate this money to projects to mitigate the environmental impacts of aviation.” 

Thomsonfly is also one of a number of companies that have pulled together to fund legal advice on the possibility of the travel industry having a case against the Treasury for the retrospective implementation of APD. 

The UK travel industry is expected to lose nearly £50million as the Chancellor has applied the APD increase to all passengers who have already booked to travel after the 1st February 2007.  Thomsonfly has long supported the inclusion of the airline industry joining an appropriate EU emissions trading programme and believes that APD is an ineffective blunt instrument to address climate change which should be removed.  

Danielle concluded, “In addition to this we would resume work on putting in place an industry-wide personal carbon offset scheme for our customers to use, an initiative on which work has been halted since the announcement about the proposed doubling of APD as this would have effectively been asking our customers to pay more than twice over for their holiday carbon offset.

Those who believe the Chancellor should use the money raised by APD on environmental projects can add you name to the online petition by clicking this link:  http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Air-Travel